General Information & FAQ

No. 6.01 is a required prerequisite, covering not only Python programming but elements of functional programming, state machines, and of language interpretation and design. Exceptions are made only in extraordinary circumstances. 6.009 (or 6.S04) is accepted as a replacement for 6.01.

6.005 will be renamed to 6.031 in spring 2017. 6.031 will be very similar in content to 6.005 for the first few semesters it is offered. Both courses will focus on writing code that is safe from bugs, easy to understand, and ready for change; both courses will concentrate on static checking, specs, testing, and abstract data types; both courses will use Java, Eclipse, and Git. 6.031 will have more group project work than 6.005 did.

It does not make sense to take both courses, and you won’t be able to satisfy one Course 6 requirement with 6.005 and another requirement with 6.031. If you’ve already taken 6.005, you should not take 6.031, but instead take a more advanced software course like 6.170, 6.172, 6.035, 6.813, 6.814, or 6.816.

No. Exceptions are made only in extraordinary circumstances.

As with all learning, if the concepts and skills in 6.005 are new to you, mastering them will require hard work.

6.005 requires basic programming fluency: if you have less previous programming experience, you will need to work harder in 6.005. For many students with less experience, learning Java is the biggest challenge. Consider taking another class (e.g. 6.178) or studying on your own (e.g. Head First Java) before taking 6.005.

Practice and feedback are key to learning, and 6.005 is structured to provide as many opportunities for practice and feedback as possible. That means we don’t want to spend class time on lectures, we want to spend it on exercises to practice the concepts and skills of building software.

Citations: Wieman et al., Course Transformation Guide · Deslauriers et al., Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics Class

Class meetings are all about practice and feedback. The individual, pair, and small group questions, exercises, and coding problems we work on in class, and the discussions and feedback led by instructors, are a required component of 6.005.

Class is like swim/judo/math team practice: you don’t get good unless you show up, and practicing with others is a necessary complement to practicing alone.

• Athletic event
• Interview
• Travel
• Brief sickness or medical problem

You are automatically excused from up to five classes, including their nanoquizzes. You will receive a zero for the missed nanoquiz(zes), but the lowest 5 grades are dropped. You can also make up any nanoquizzes for half credit by following the usual procedure for nanoquiz makeups.

Similarly, the in-class exercises and reading exercises for up to five missed classes will be automatically excused. Although there is no way to make up additional exercises, they contribute only to your class participation grade, and you can do an excellent job in other aspects of class participation (like Piazza) to compensate.

1. Post privately on Piazza and explain the circumstances.

2. If you haven’t already visited S³, go there to get help with all of your classes, not just 6.005. Ask your S³ dean to get in touch with the 6.005 instructors.

In some situations, you will be able to make up nanoquizzes for full credit, but you will not be able to make up in-class exercises, as explained in the previous answer.

Your laptop is a necessary tool for in-class programming, but it also presents a huge opportunity for distraction. The price of that distraction is paid not only by you, but by all those around you who can see your screen. In one study linked below:

• For note-takers with laptops, multi-tasking led to a 11% drop in comprehension test scores.
• For note-takers without laptops, merely having a laptop multi-tasker in their field of view led to a 17% drop in comprehension test scores!

If you want to use a smartphone in your lap, so that the screen is not visible and not distracting to others, we have no objection, but you’ll still be hurting yourself.

Citations: Sana et al., Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers · Mueller and Oppenheimer, The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard

In general, participation in class is graded based on whether you attempted the questions, exercises, coding problems, etc., not on correctness.

Programming exercises are graded based on whether you’ve attempted the exercise and made some progress, even if you don’t complete it. You are not expected to complete unfinished exercises after class, but TAs and LAs will be happy to help you review or finish them.

If you collaborate using Eclipseonut and you & your partner see one another’s contributions, your work has been recorded. If you encounter technical issues, you can use Git to add-commit-push your work to Athena (visit lab or post on Piazza to resolve the issue for next time).

Reading the material before class prepares you to spend class time practicing the concepts and skills you’re learning. Reading in advance gives you time to think and ask questions, and repeated exposure to material spaced out over time improves learning.

See: Spacing effect

Reading exercises are graded only based on whether you have completed them, not whether your answers were correct.

Nanoquizzes assess whether you did the reading and practiced with the reading exercises before coming to class, and they provide feedback to you on your comprehension. Nanoquizzes are themselves part of the practice we do in class: recalling information from the readings benefits learning more than just re-reading or re-hearing it.

See: Testing effect

No. However, reading exercises are often based on (or copied from) past nanoquiz questions.

As described above, only extreme circumstances will justify a request for extensions beyond the usual slack days.

1. Post privately on Piazza and explain the circumstances.
2. If you haven’t already visited S³, go there to get help with all of your classes, not just 6.005. Ask your S³ dean to get in touch with the 6.005 instructors.

1. Push your work immediately to maximize the likelihood it can be considered.
2. Post privately on Piazza and explain the circumstances.

1. Post privately on Piazza and explain the circumstances.
2. Continue to push your work to maximize the likelihood it can be considered.
3. Do not open any code reviewing tasks in Caesar; if you look at other student’s code you will not get your extension.

You can start reviewing code the morning after your (extended) beta deadline. A TA has to load your code into Caesar before you’ll get any assignments to review other people’s code. Your code review is due by 10 pm that same day, because your classmates are depending on getting your reviews. If you took 1 slack day, that means your code review deadline is the same as the official deadline for the people who took no slack. If you took 2 slack days, then your code review deadline is 24 hours after the official deadline.

You cannot make up missed code reviews. You can recover participation credit by doing excellent code reviews on future problem sets and making excellent contributions on Piazza.

Correctness is one of the central ideas of 6.005, and it’s your responsibility. On later problem sets in the course, you will have more and more design freedom, which means we can test your individual components less and less: we can only test the required specifications. You must use your own careful design and thorough testing to achieve correctness.

This sort of issue is one of the reasons we have beta and final submissions: your final submission is the opportunity to fix problems with your beta and recover partial credit.

If your submission did not compile and pass the public tests on Didit, we are not likely to reconsider the grade. It’s your responsibility to ensure that your submission passes those tests.

1. Investigate the problem by visiting office hours or lab hours, since debugging on Piazza is infeasible.
2. If there was an issue, post privately on Piazza and explain the circumstances.
3. Visit instructor office hours.

The overall grade for a problem set will typically be computed as follows:

overall grade = 40% × beta-autograde + 45% × final-autograde + 15% × manual-grade

where beta-autograde and final-autograde are determined by automated tests, and manual-grade is determined by graders reading the code. One part of manual-grade is fixing code in response to code reviews.

The breakdown may vary by 5-10% from problem set to problem set, depending on how much of the problem set can be autograded and how much requires human eyes. Each problem set’s breakdown will be announced when final grades are released.

Final grade reports for a problem set are released as quickly as possible, but it depends on the speed of manual grading. We grade as fast as we can. Even before final grades are released, you can use the feedback from beta reports and code reviewing to improve your work on the next problem set.

No.

Yes, but you may bring a single 8.5×11” double-sided page of notes, readable without magnification, that was created by you. Since the process of creating a crib sheet is most of its benefit, you may not share these notes or use someone else’s.

Yes, in the archive of past quizzes.

Letter grade cutoffs are determined only in the final grading meeting, and they are assigned only after individual consideration as described above.

If the problem is an objective grader error, like adding points incorrectly or overlooking something that was clear in your answer, then you can email the grader to ask for the correction, if the grader’s username is shown on the grade report. (It isn’t always shown.)

Otherwise, this is a rare case in 6.005 where we ask you not to post on Piazza, and not to email or talk to a TA. 6.005 TAs are not empowered to have discussions about grades, and Piazza is reserved for learning and problem solving. The point of this rule is so that TAs can focus on helping people learn, rather than being grade arbiters.

Instead, please bring your grading questions in person to an instructor’s office hours, which are shown on the course calendar.

If you’re doing well in 6.005, you can become a paid tutor for a classmate, even while you’re still taking the class. HKN Tutoring provides one-on-one tutoring for hundreds of Course 6 students each semester and is another resource for students looking for extra help. Tutors are paid $15/hour and have the opportunity to significantly help a fellow Course 6 student. Sign up as a tutor.